Landscape lights are popular for lighting up residential and commercial pathways, driveways, yards, and the like. Typically, individual low voltage landscape lights are hard wired directly to a transformer which in turn is hardwired to a power source. Once installed the lights are generally controlled by the transformer having a photocell that turns the lights on at dusk and off after a user selectable amount of time or at dawn.
The prior art generally allows for only controlling one string of lights at a time, and not control multiple zones, where each zone can have a string of lights. The prior art generally does not allow for controlling individual lights or accessories connected to a string of lights. Accessories can include but are not limited to speakers, motion detectors, sprinklers, water fall pumps, and the like.
In the prior art, the user must run the powered cable from a 120 volt power supply to a transformer, which then is directly wired to a line of landscape lights. Here, a single switch is often used to power all lighting down the line. As such, there are problems with these prior art setups.
The single switch control is undesirable for the customer because the landscape lighting power source would need to be powered on at all times consuming energy and affecting the lifetime use of the power source.
Additionally, the operator would have to cut the landscape lighting cable for each light and then make two wiring connections in order for the switch to operate correctly.
Additionally, each zone of a string of landscape lights would also require separate switches to turn on and off the selected zone of landscape lights. As such, the more zones of the landscape lights, the more manual time is needed to operate and control the zones.
Thus, the need exists for solutions to the above problems with the prior art.